Users of electronic messaging platforms have access to wide variety of communication channels that may each present streams of individual messages on a continual basis. Examples of the channels, messages and/or associated message content include email, mailing lists, instant messaging, discussion forums, chat applications, work item notifications, phone calls, meeting requests, invitations to personal or team events, personal communications, customer issues, services outages, etc.
Reading, comprehending or otherwise processing such individual messages often require attention by the user that interferes with or distracts the user from a task that the user is currently focused upon, sometimes referred to as a “context switch.” Context switches triggered by message interruption may be costly with respect to worker productivity: for example, it may take a software developer five to ten minutes, or more, to get into the same state of mind of coding as they were in before the interruption occurred. Interruptions occurring throughout a given day that result in significant amounts of context shift may require corresponding amounts of productivity time, resulting in the developer failing to complete a scheduled or expected amount of coding over a given workday, and wherein the developer may end up working late at night, or on weekends when there are less distractions, in order to timely process a given workload.
For example, consider a developer “Chris” with a large work load, including responsibility for a high priority narrative for a new cloud architecture service that Chris's team is developing. However, throughout the day people constantly distract Chris, either through instant messaging, email, or queries from discussion forums (for example, to determine what libraries Chris is currently using, the current state of the older architecture, if Chris is free to meet for coffee on the weekend, etc.). As a result, Chris ends up getting insufficient work done in the office during the work day, and ends up continuing to work at home well beyond the office hours, making for a poor work-life balance.